Mission Friends: A Pietist Way To Be Human | Listening to the story of God | Pastor Preston | January 29

Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast

00:00:03.130] - Speaker 1

Hi there. My name is Preston Pouteaux. Welcome to the Lake Ridge Community Church Podcast. This is where we share some of our messages from Sunday mornings. So we're glad you're here to listen. We'd love for you to join us in person. We meet on Sunday mornings at 10:30 a.m at Our Lady of Wisdom School here in Chestermere. At our core, we're a community of people, so we gather on on Sundays. But we also do a lot in the week together. We are people learning to follow Jesus and love our city. So to learn more, visit lakeridgecommunity.com. Hope to check in and visit with you soon. Take care. Thanks for listening.

[00:00:44.240] - Speaker 2

What do you think are in here? Look, I'm going to share with you what's in some of these things. You can sit on down. The sermon will peak in about five, six minutes and then it'll just all kind of slide down after that. Hey. We are on a journey all year long to talk what it is to have this one and beautiful life in Jesus. I just firmly believe that Jesus shows us do I got a question already about the whole sermon series about the end of the entire year? Yeah. Okay. We are exploring what it is and I think I'm proposing all year long that if we point our eyes towards Jesus, he will show us what to do with this one and beautiful life. And so we're going to be doing this throughout the year in lots of different ways, exploring what it is to be human in the hands of the loving God that made us. And so we are about to enter on a bit of a journey and and we are going to talk for the next few Sundays. Our sermon series is called Mission Friends. A Pious way to be human.

[00:01:49.260] - Speaker 2

That's a lot there. Isn't that's a mouthful? And that's why I'm going to unpack it over the next little while here the story of God. We come from a tradition as covenant people, part of the Evangelical Covenant Church, and as a group called Pietists, and I'll explain what that is, is that we deeply love the Bible. We think that the story of God makes sense of our lives today. We think that if we somehow were to get into God's story or have God's story get into us, some interesting weaving of God's story in our story, that somehow, in some way, we would begin to walk in a way that is a lot like Jesus. Did Jesus read the Bible? Did you ever think about that? Did Jesus read the Bible? What did Jesus think of the Bible? What did Jesus think of God's story? That's kind of a weird kind of mind trip, isn't it? Because we say that Jesus is God, so did he have to learn the Bible? What did he have to do with the story of God? We're going to unpack that a little bit kids. And I want to show you my first thing here.

[00:03:00.240] - Speaker 2

And it is a box. I got a box. It's my daughter's 9th birthday today. And she was given this beautiful box by her sister. And I thought it was lovely. Let's see what's inside. Another box. I know. How deep is this going to go? Did you know that when Jesus was young and all the way while Jesus was growing up, he would go to something called synagogue? This was the place where people would gather, kind of like this. And they would gather around and somebody would go to the back in the front, behind a curtain and pull out a box. And this box would be raised up high and carried. And it was a big box. This is a little box. But it was a big box that they lifted out. And suddenly this was very important. Suddenly the box would be opened and in it would come out a Bible. Well, the Bible looked a little different back then. The story of God was in a big scroll. The scroll was probably about this big. Sometimes it took two people to carry it, and it was covered in a big velvet thing and it was inside of a box.

[00:04:12.660] - Speaker 2

And the box was called the Arc of the Law, right? And Jesus, they would sometimes have people read. And one day, Jesus, they brought out this big scroll, pulled it out. You see, no one had a Bible, right? There was only one kept here. And they open it up and they'd unfold it. And Jesus would read from it. And one day, Jesus opened it up and he read from it, and he said, today, what I'm reading is come fulfilled. It's come alive. What I'm reading is suddenly coming out of the box, and it is now going to enter into the world. And everybody was like, what is he talking about? No, what you do with it, everybody thought, is you take it afterwards and you put it back in the box and then back in the other box and you put it away. And Jesus, he came out and he said, no, today this story goes out. What do you think about that? What do you think about something like that? Well, this is the next thing. So Jesus brings a story and it brings it out of the box. He takes it as a gift and he unwraps it.

[00:05:26.570] - Speaker 2

That's one of the most important things about the Bible, is we unwrap it. And the second one is this. Jesus did something even more. Look at this. This is every home has one of these. Does anybody guess what this is? A junk box. Yeah. This is a sewing kit. Look at this. This is a sewing kit. We got different colors of stuff, of thread in there. We have needles. Be careful if you put your fingers in there. And we have look at this. Where is it? We have patches. This pair of jeans that I'm wearing, these are my favorite pair of jeans. And look at the knee. I wore these today because look at what I did. Look at my patch job. What do you think of that? Terrible, right? That's a terrible patch job. I know nothing about patching things, but this is where I go to patch things up and sew something onto my favorite jeans. Well, guess what? Did you know that Jesus, he took the story of God and he sowed it into his heart. He sowed it into his life. The grand story of God became so connected to Jesus that he carried with it wherever he went.

[00:06:38.970] - Speaker 2

Did you know that Jesus, he knew the story of God so well? He knew the grand story. In fact, he refers to in his teachings. He refers to Adam and Eve and Abel and Noah and Lot. He refers to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He tells stories of Moses and David and Solomon, even the Queen of Sheba. Elijah naman Zechariah daniel Jonah. These are just a few. Then he starts to quote Psalms, and he quotes Isaiah and Malachi and Deuteronomy. Jesus was just telling the story of the Old Testament over and over again. Woven into his life was this grand story. It was his. Did you know one in ten things that Jesus says is directly just quoted from the Old Testament? 180 verses of the 1800 places where Jesus is talking about something. It is stories from the Old Testament, the story of God, it is etched in his heart. Or as I say, it is sown into him, he is carrying it with him. His heart is so etched in his heart, and it spills out in his life to heal, to remind, to forgive, to teach, and to guide his friends. You see, it's not locked away in a box.

[00:07:58.800] - Speaker 2

It is now brought by Jesus and sewed into his heart. That's what he's carrying around, is this grand story sowed into his heart. Last thing, what do I got here? This is a good backpack. This has served me well for, like, 20 years. There's a lot going on in this backpack. Act back. Look at this. Yeah, I got a bee on there. I got a beekeeper. Look. Put that inside. What am I doing here? What am I doing? Yeah. What am I doing? Yeah, I'm going somewhere with this man. I'm on the move, right? Did you know that Jesus, he didn't just put the Bible back into the box, it was stitched in his heart. But the Bible, his story of God that he's now carrying with him, is now on the move. He's taking it somewhere. One day, Jesus was on a journey, and he brought himself to this little mountain. It's called a mountain. It's called Mount Moray. And it isn't big, but on Mount Moray, at the base of Mount Moray, is this ancient, ancient long forgotten city, Schunum. And it was a place where a miracle happened in the Old Testament.

[00:09:20.370] - Speaker 2

It was a place where in the Old Testament, there was once a guy named Elijah. And Elisha, when he would pass by this mount, he'd stay in this family's house in Schunum. And when Jesus went and stayed at when Elisha went and stayed at the Schunumites house, these people, they wanted a kid really bad. So one day they had a little baby boy. And the baby boy grew up. And Elisha got to know this family and care for them as he's traveling around the land. Well, one day this boy dies, and they send out far away they send out a person who goes a day away to find Elisha and say, come back. This person is dead. This kid that you know, that you love is dead. And Elisha comes back and he does all these different things that eventually the boy, can you believe it? Rises from the dead. He comes back from the dead. And it's a major story. Well, one day, Jesus went to the same place. Now. It's called name. Let's see what happens to that story. Jesus is walking through at the base of Mount Moray at the same place, and guess what he sees coming out of the town?

[00:10:39.220] - Speaker 2

It is a procession, a funeral. These people are carrying a boy that had died. And Jesus comes into this town, and guess what he does? I'm going to read it for you. Jesus comes into this town and he sees that these parents, they're so sad, their baby boy died. And he steps in to this place. And here is what Luke says happens in that amazing story. Goes like this. See if my little eyes can spot it. Goes like this. Soon afterward, Jesus went with his disciples to the village of Nain. Now, people would know where this is, right besides where this great other story happened. And a large crowd followed him, and a funeral possession procession was coming out. As he approached the village gate, the young man who had died was a widow's only son. And a large crowd from the village was with her. When the Lord saw her, his heart was overflowed with compassion. Don't cry, he said. Then he walked over to the coffin and he touched it, and the bearers stopped. Young man, he said, I tell you, get up. And the dead boy, he sat up and began to talk.

[00:12:02.070] - Speaker 2

And Jesus gave him back to his mother. Great fear swept over the crowd, and they praised God, saying, a mighty prophet has risen among us, and God has visited his people today. And the news about Jesus spread throughout Judea and the surrounding countryside. You see, Jesus, he wasn't just pleased to keep the story of God in a box. He had taken the story and he wove it into his life, and it became his story. And guess what? He did. He went out and he enacted the story. He said, no, god didn't just work once in the Old Testament. God is at work here among you. Now, the story of God is a story that's on the move in me. What would it have been like for you to be his disciple? Watching that going, I thought that happened 800 years ago, only it happens now. Jesus is doing this. He enacts the story. What a move from a box kept behind a curtain to something that's actually changing the world around them, changing lives around them, bringing this boy back up from the dead. Almost everything Jesus said or did was to help people see that God is alive among them now.

[00:13:16.670] - Speaker 2

God is working in them now. Piatism. What an old fashioned word is that. Look at that. Piatist. Our family of churches, if there was Peterson's and Andersons around Swedes, there's not many around these days. There's a few. We have some residual Swedishness in us. I sometimes buy Ikea stuff just to keep a connection to these roots. Right. I love meatballs and those often help me stay grounded in my faith. Right. Something happened a few hundred years ago where the church in Sweden was just a building you went to. People had lost their passion for Jesus. I think historians would be pretty unified on that. You went there because actually it was law to go there. If you wanted to be a citizen of Sweden, you had to go to a Lutheran, swedish Lutheran Church. You didn't need to read your Bible, you didn't need to have a personal enjoyment of following Jesus. You didn't need any of that. As long as you showed up at church and paid your dues, you were a good Swede and a good Lutheran all in one. Well, something happened and there's a group of people who are just not so pleased with that.

[00:14:28.570] - Speaker 2

A group of people started to say, there's got to be way more. There's got to be way more than just going to a building and singing some songs. And so these people, they called themselves The Pietists because they started to do something. They unwrapped the Bible for themselves. And the Lutherans weren't pleased with this. Lutheran said, no, the Bible stays in the building. You don't read it in groups. And so they started these little groups called conventicles, and they'd get together and they'd read it. And as they started to read it, they started to stitch it into their own lives, started to weave it in patchwork by patchwork. The story became part of them and they would carry these stories. And the State church didn't really like that either, but they were like, no, we're onto something here. We're following the way of Jesus. We got it out of the box, we're stitching it to us now. We're on the move. So these Pietis started to move out. A lot of them moved over to north america, and they started schools, and they started hospitals, and they started orphanages, and they started churches. And these people were made fun of because they were too emotional about their faith.

[00:15:43.610] - Speaker 2

They wore their heart on their sleeves. The Piasts were kind of known as being emotional people. They're my friends. I feel things, right? I'm like, I feel like I'm in good company here, right? But they were emotional because they suddenly had a story that gave their lives a whole new framework for being their faith wasn't just something that stayed in a box, stayed in a church, stayed away, but it was something that they could carry with them, and it was theirs. And when they started to see that the story of God could be fulfilled in them, in the real world, in the place around them, in their neighborhoods, in their families, when they started to see that happen, they were overjoyed. They were considered tremendously joyful people because they discovered something really potent about what the story of God can do in them. And so they went to Alaska, and I got to meet some Inuit. I had lunch with some Inuit people. Ivan Avenue, him and I, we had a supper, and he told me about the little village that he came from. And he said, years and years ago, some Covenant people, they came to his village, and the hope of Jesus was shared through all the villages and villages and villages.

[00:17:03.670] - Speaker 2

And people were deeply moved to the point now where there's not much in the way of swedes up there anymore. But, boy, is there a whole bunch of Covenant churches all over Alaska. Every second little village has people who are deeply moved by this because they got to unpack the Bible for themselves and stitch the story and feel the deep sense that Jesus is their story. Not one brought by the swedes, but one that has become theirs. Because the Piatus, they always wanted the story to be yours, not one that's kept in a box, but one that's brought out. And so they went to Canada, they went to the Congo. There are more Covenanters in the Congo than there are in North America and to the east side of Chicago and all these places. And they've called themselves the Mission Friends. The mission friends. They're on this mission to be a part of the unpacking of the hope and story of God together. They realized that this was a together project, a community project. I want to ask you, is a story of God true for you? I often have people ask me, maybe because I'm the pastor and this is a good question to ask, but they go, Preston, is this true?

[00:18:23.390] - Speaker 2

Is this true? I often put a pause in there, mostly for dramatic effect, but I put a pause in there. And the reason I put a pause in there is because my question is this it might be inherently true, but if it's not true for you, then it's not true if it just stays in the box. And we put it on a shelf and we say to ourselves, I believe the Bible is true. And I put it up over here. But I've agreed that it's true. Is it really true? Does something stay true when it's meant to be lived? When it's meant to be carried out? When it's meant to be carried in community together, into and relived and fulfilled every day in your life and in the world around you. But it stays away in a box or in your nightstand and it's not known. And it's not lived out. Can we still call it true? So I put the dramatic pause in there, because I go, maybe it's not true for you. Maybe it's not true if it stays off to one side. Not that it's not inherently true, but if it's not true in you, then it's not part of your story.

[00:19:37.110] - Speaker 2

And you'll always see it as a dusty book. You always will. That's why we need Jesus. Not we need Jesus who shows us how to unpack, how to stitch, and then how to carry Jesus back at name. Imagine if you were there on that day when you saw Jesus raise this boy from the dead. Imagine if you were there and you saw as Jesus did, you know Jesus was going down to Jerusalem. And if you were going down to Jerusalem, you were going to worship in the Temple. And if you're going to worship in the Temple, guess what? You don't touch a dead body. You don't touch anything that'll make you unclean for you to be able to not worship at the big temple. And so they saw Jesus, and they were watching closely. And here Jesus shows up. If he was ten minutes early or ten minutes late, he would have missed the procession, but he showed up right on time. Because I think Jesus had this deep sense that his life was so unfolded into the grand story of God that he was stepping in right on time, and he came in to enact, and he touched that coffin.

[00:20:49.630] - Speaker 2

He didn't care if it was making Him dirty. He didn't care what it would do for Him for the next day or what people would think about Him. But he touched that coffin and that boy came to life. What would that say to you about how to follow Jesus if you lived that way? Could we just be asked to live out the story of Jesus now again, to mimic Him, to step into our world and try these things, to eat with sinners and saints? Could we try that? To touch the poor and sick, actually meet them and know their names, to gather, to learn, to teach, to love our enemies and be the last to be meek? Could we try those things? I wonder, my great wondering, could this happen what if the whole point of Lake Ridge was to be a community of people who so knew the story of God? It was so far out of the box, so stitched and woven into our lives and so much on our backs that we were out there every day going, oh, this story is alive in us. It is true in me because it is true right before me.

[00:22:02.150] - Speaker 2

The Spirit of God is so at work in my life and in front of me that I can step in. And I am here also fulfilling the grand story of God every single day. Could it be that that's what it is that we are doing here? What if we could see the pathway that the Spirit of God lays out in front of us because our eyes have been attuned to the little hints of God at work in us? That when there's a Saturday afternoon that we want to do one thing and the Spirit is saying, hey, why don't you come over here and give a call to your friend? Maybe go over to their house, check in on them, see how they're doing. That you have eyes because you're wearing the story of God glasses, right? And you are on the move, even if the path is not clear, like the song said on that dusty desert road, that we would have faith because the story of God is woven into us. Could you see yourself doing this? What would be your first step? Wonder what would be your first step in joining Jesus to take the scripture out of the box, stitch it into your lives, and take it on the move?

[00:23:13.780] - Speaker 2

What in your life today? What would be your first step in trying that? Do you think you could trust Jesus to do the things that Jesus did? Do you think you could trust your life to be woven into God's life, that you would be living out this story here? Or what is this idea of maybe being a mission friend and finding a way of following Jesus together? What does it say about how we carry the story of God into the world? On February 7, I'm going to be starting. It's just a living room conversation. We'll see where it goes. If some people show up, great. But it might be the start of something we are going to talk about. Just like how to get a Bible, how to begin this. Maybe you have a Bible, but you don't even know which way it goes up. That's okay. We're calling it no Experience Necessary because you don't need much experience with it. Or maybe you'll be thinking about maybe getting your kids a Bible. Maybe they don't have one. Or what reading it might look like in your life or stitching it into you. When I went to college, I studied with some guys who are tree planters.

[00:24:17.550] - Speaker 2

And you know what they would do? They would plant trees, and they would tape a piece of the page of the Bible on their arm, and they'd spend the day planting trees, memorizing the Bible. And by the end of it, they all came back to college and they memorized the whole Book of Psalms or something. What can you do there? I'm going to end with this story, the story that changed me when I was a little boy and got me on the road to read the Bible for myself. And it goes like this. It was told to me and absolutely changed me. There's a story from a long time ago that a little girl was worshipping with her church community in their basement in China. You could not worship out in the open. And so she would worship with her family and her friends, and they would worship in the basement of these homes, and they would draw all the curtains and make sure that nobody could see and to see what it was that they were doing, they'd do in secret. And this community, they only had one Bible, and the pastor had this one Bible, and they kept it hidden away in case somebody ever came in and wanted to take their Bible away.

[00:25:30.010] - Speaker 2

It was kept precious. It was very valuable to them. And as a boy, I heard this story, and I was like, what happens next? Well, one day, a little girl in this community, I always imagine her being about my age, maybe nine or ten, she went to the pastor of the community after one of their little secret gatherings one day, and she went in and she said, pastor, could I take the Bible home tonight? And the pastor, he says, you realize this is our only one. We keep it secret, we keep it safe, because this is our story. This gives us the hope of Jesus. And if this thing was missing, we'd be in some trouble. But the pastor, bless his heart, he he laid out all the ground rules. He said, Listen, okay, every night you can take this and you can take it home. We'll wrap it up, you can keep it under your shirt and you can take it home. And if you bring it home, the next bring it back to me the next morning. It should be good. Are you fine with that? And the little girl, she she took it home, and she would do this day after day.

[00:26:35.290] - Speaker 2

They came up with a routine. She did it well, pastor's, please. Got the Bible every morning back. And then one day, she stopped bringing the Bible, stopped asking for the Bible, and took a few days, and the pastor finally said to her, my girl, why don't you take the Bible anymore? Do you not read it? What's happened? The little girl, she said, I'm done. You're done reading it? Never heard of anybody who finished the Bible that quick. She said, no, I'm done copying it. I finished. I stay awake every night and I write down the whole story of God, and I make a mind. I know this is the only Bible in the in the whole village, but now there's two, and this one's mine. Now I can read it whatever I want. When I was a boy and I heard that story, I i had no interest in reading the Bible before that, but when I heard that story, I was like, some people spend their whole lives hoping to find the hope of Jesus. Some people spend their whole lives hoping to find a story that gives their story meaning in life. And here's this girl, and she finally finds her story.

[00:27:53.990] - Speaker 2

She finds the hope of Jesus, and the hope of Jesus becomes so she stitched it to her life, and it becomes hers, and it goes on the move. You see, my friends, we aren't starting an institution when we come together as a church. We're starting a movement. We are a bunch of people who take the story of God and we put it on our backs, and we enter into the world because this is a story that lives out of us. It is a story that grows and multiplies. Friends, I am not the keeper of this. I don't have one copy. And you come and you get a piece of it, and you go away from it, and we put the box back. Now, if we are to be God's people in this place, my friends, there is really good news. You, too, can get one on Amazon today paperback. It's cheap. You know what? I got people in this church that if you can't afford $10, we'll cover your $10. Anybody want to cover someone's $1010 to $10 and give them a Bible? Okay, we we have a few hands. Look, look at those hands and get cash out of them, right today, friends, we are going to start a movement here, okay?

[00:29:05.860] - Speaker 2

We're going to start a movement not of one pastor who brings up his Bible once in a while and tries to stitch something, but that you would take the story of God and find in all the ways that you think, whether you're I actually don't really care what version it is. I don't care where what it looks like, if it's got leather and it's this thick and you need a cart to pull it in or whether it's little. But to take the story of God and weave it into our lives this is what being the people of God is about. And you will be unsatisfied until you do. Friends, I hope that we are the people of God and people of the story mission, friends, who are on the move. So we're going to start something over this year. It might sound old fashioned to you, depending on your tradition, it might sound brand new, but I'd like you to get a Bible, and I'd like you. To start to learn about what it is, what the story does. Maybe you've just tried and you landed somewhere in Lamentations and you slammed it shut and said, no, I've tried that before.

[00:30:10.610] - Speaker 2

Don't start with Lamentations, we'll start somewhere else. But I am hoping that this year will be a year of change for us as we become people of the story. Because you need it to get through what you're going through. You need the story to empower you for where you are going. It's empowered millions of others, billions of others, and it's the only thing that's going to empower us. What I hope is that we become a movement of people, every single person patchwork covered in the story of God. So whatever we face, whatever we hit, we are ready to move forward again and again and again until we become a people so alive to the grand story that is adopted into ours. We are going to start doing this in kids ministry. We are hoping to give every kid a Bible or have them bring their Bible. If you want to bring your Bible with you to church, I'm going to be preaching in a way that we'll get to open it up. Maybe you want to write underneath it. You can write in a Bible. Did you know that Kelly used to rip pages out and give it to people?

[00:31:12.070] - Speaker 2

I was offended. My wife. But you can do what you want with it. Because guess what? You can get another one. Friends, this is good news for us. We're people of a story. We're mission friends. We're on this journey together. I caught this picture because, look, there's two little people in the back of a boat. We're not alone. We're not alone. Please stand with me. I often wonder where that Chinese girl went. She's probably a woman now. Maybe she's an old lady now. I don't know how old this story is, but I wonder what was it like for her to read a scripture that she wrote with her own hands? I wonder what it would be like for us to read a scripture that is ours. Not one that was passed to us by a great grandparent, but ours, our story that gives us life in everything we do. I wonder what a community would happen if that became us. That's my great hope for our kids. For you. For me. May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up his countenance upon you and grant you his peace.

[00:32:23.090] - Speaker 2

People of the story, it is yours. Go from here in peace. Amen. Amen. Have a good week, everybody. Bless you.